Onyx Tree Letter Campaign

#1

Hello Everyone.

I’m trying to mobilize EIAS users to contact Onyx Tree to have them consider porting Tree Storm to Universal Binary. Ian Waters has been talking to the company and they recently wrote his boss stating that they have effectively stopped all development of their products for OSX. It’s quite unlikely that they’ll continue EIAS Tree Storm for just the PC as well.

Considering that EIAS has a lot of architectural based users, I would think that loosing tree generation support will be quite devastating.

Please take the time to contact (preferably write) Onyx and express your concerns.

info@onyxtree.com
support@onyxtree.com

#2

First response from Onyx:

“While MacOS is in transition phase, we are not going to chase a moving target. Once it settles and becomes more predictable, we will consider resuming the development for Mac. Note that you can always use FACT objects exported from OnyxGARDEN Suite with any version of EIAS on MaxOSX or Windows. In addition, you can use TREE STORM with EIAS 6.6 or 7 for Windows, that includes running WindowsXP either on PC or IntelMac with Parallels; The current TREE STORM works with the current EIAS 6.6 on Windows very nicely.”

Hmmm OSX a moving target? Like Windows has stopped doing any development themselves? Seems to me that they’re simply catering to the market where they have the most customers and don’t want to go the extra mile for their OSX customers. Seems like a poor excuse to me. OSX has stabilized with Intel and OSX 10.5.

#3

My response:

Dear Sirs,

If you’re referring to the PowerPC vs Intel debate, that instability is clearly resolved. OSX is committed to the intel processor. As far as its operating system is concerned, OSX 10.5 is clearly a front runner and its recent release is guaranteed to be Apple’s primary operating system for months and years to come. I don’t see any reason to believe that they’ll be moving away from OSX anytime soon. As for the compiler, its also clear that Apple is wanting developers to use Xcode to build universal binaries for PowerPC and Intel processors.

So where is the moving target? Delaying the OSX ports of your products will only ensure that you’ll loose more customers. If anything, your decision will only result in OSX customers switching applications and moving to those OSX products that can support their needs like xFROG. Now is not the time to be indecisive.

#4

I kind of understand their position: this has been a rapidfire series of changes in a very few years (for a small company?): from Mac OS 9 to OS X via Carbon/MetroWerks to Intel via Xcode (which everybody who did Carbon porting to Intel said it definitely wasn’t that good an IDE, hence they stayng in Metrowerks up to the last minute) to Apple advising some things in WWDC’06 and then doing an about-face in WWDC’07…

The thing is, of course, that Apple has arrived where it intended, finally, so no more state of flux… unless Leopard breaks more things yet or discards some APIs they need. Or Onyx intended to go 64bits (I guess not, but…), which is dead in Carbon.

Windows-wise, things are sedate in comparison, I guess (Vista is the first big change in how many years?). Mac-Wise, is a new OS each one or two years, with lots of “point zero” woes.

#5

Shooting in another direction…
I sent them a note using the “you are so great” technique… And told them I am now using Arbaro, a free OpenSource program with great success.
Some people are more responsive to flattery… or competition.

#6

Hi Richard,
Could you share some renders you’ve done in EI using Arbaro.
Does the generated model import into Animator well?

Thanks.

Aziz.

#7

Hi Aziz!
Exported to OBJ from Arbaro then translated to Fact with Object2Fact2.

Clic for movie…

#8

Very nice Richard; and thanks for the heads up about Arbaro.

#9

I contacted them by phone, a few months ago. I will definately follow up with an email to them. To me, they are a valuable adittion to an EI animators toolkit. Especially Storm.
Not any good alternatives in my opinion , especially that animate.

Scott Novasic
1111 s Grand Ave #915
Los Angeles Ca 90015

#10

Hi Richard,
Thanks for the quicktime sample. The leaf texturing looks nice and animates without flickering. I need to give Arbaro a test run :slight_smile:

I own an older version of Tree Storm but am currently using Vue 5 for my trees (still images only though).

I see so many import issues in EIAS requiring Obj2Fact, that it seems almost a necessity for any EIAS user. I wonder if EIAS 7 will incorporate it?

#11

Please remember that Arbaro is no Onyx tree. We really have to tell these guys that we need their product. Onyx Tree is an outstanding product while Arbaro is OK. No way to animate like Tree Storm. But Arbaro is free and usable as you can see in the demo movie.

Please take the time to contact Onyx. They have to know we are interrested.

Object2Fact is a must. It is essential to keep the UV from Arbaro or Ivy generator and solved all my OBJ translation problems.

#12

Thanks Richard; I had played with arbaro had inital problems with getting it to export anything but PovRay files. However your clip made me pick it up again and this time I managed to export an obj file. (easily, not sure what i was doing wrong before)

I imported the object into Wings3d (open source/free poly/sds modeler) to check and correct the geometry (it was fine) and then exported from wings as an FBX file which EI picked up with UV’s intact (so people without Object2Fact can import object models but the texture(s) need to be brought into EI separately as EI’s FBX seems to correctly translate the uv map but discards the texture maps)

At any rate… I spent a few minutes last night and got some fairly good results. (this was my first) Render was only about 10 secs (good, given the qualtity of leaves and branches and the detail.
You can see I spent (very) little time on the branch and trunk textures (and the leaves were easy (I had a Maple leaf complete with an alpha (to use as a clip map))) only a couple minutes (literally) spent texturing, lighting and rendering

I am trying to get leaf flutter (as in a breeze) and trunk sway by using some deformers. If I get any time today I am going to try a couple stacked deformers on the trunk level (branches, sub-branches and leaves are set to follow deformation) and just a (vertical) multi wave deform on the leaf onject(s)


#13

Hi All,

I just heard the news about Onyx the other day. I have had their storm pluging since shortly after I first got EI in the mid nineties. I use it often and will send a note to them immediately.

Apple has certainly made it rough for developers so I do sympathize. On the other hand I also feel that developers do have some level of responsibility to their users, so long as it is not unreasonable, to maintain products for all their users as long as they are continuing to sell them.

Do we have any idea of how many EI users also have Storm?

Bill Dempsey

#14

I’ve tested Arbaro too.
Seems a pretty good (if limited) tool for basic 3D trees.

Onyx Tree is more detailed, more robust, with more control, and of course has “Storm” for animation.

I certainly hope Onyx will make a UB for EIAS.

Arbaro test renders are attached.

Dave

#15

Well…if we keep up the momentum they might reconsider sooner. Has anyone gotten and return emails from them?

#16

Well, i sent mine too. I really hope Onyx will make a UB for EiAS, but since Onix Flower only for Windows i had a bad feeling.

Hope i am wrong.

FelixCat

#17

In my opinion to not have Tree in the EI mix would be criminal ! I’ve been onto Onyx a number of times about this but I’ll get in touch again.

I generally create trees using the live plug in and then export and re-import before I render. I know I could carry on doing this by running an older version of EI but its additional time and hassle.

The ability to animate trees in EIAS with Storm is something I’d really like to start using as well so a UB version is just essential in my book.

I had a look at Vue 6 the other day - pretty amazing looking piece of software and lots of plug in versions for C4D, Max, Maya etc. but alas nothing to plug into EI. Their demo movie makes it all look really simple (which it probably isn’t) but to use that currently you’d have to composite elements rendered in each app which to my simplistic mind just isn’t going to happen.

So, lets convince Onyx that OSX is now stable and that the port is definitely worth it !

James

#18

And Vue’s wind looks like a simple see-saw motion when near camera. Tree Storm is much better. Maya’s the best, but Paint Effects trees’ textures can look fake and don’t have the abundance of tree types that Onyx has.

#19

Here’s an interesting article I ran across during a search today, a rare interview with Onyx Computing. It’s an old article, dated January 2002, and in the interview they state these same arguments back then. The article highlights the fact that Onyx Computing has had negative sentiments brewing against Apple and the Mac platform in general for a long time and that their current stance is not just a recent development. Here’s the article:

http://www.macuarium.com/macuarium/actual/especiales/2002_07_01_onyxinterviewgb.shtml

Cheers,

john

http://www.starshonegallery.com

#20

I don’t really blame Onyx for being less than enthusiastic about keeping their Mac version up to date. From a purely business POV, there’s more food on the PC side. I also can’t fault Apple for wanting to move forward with its SDKs. However, I do point a wagging finger at Apple for screwing over Carbon-based developers. At WWDC 2006 they said publicly that 64-bit Carbon existed and was going to be part of Leopard. This year however Apple basically dropped its collective pants and said anyone not working in Cocoa can kiss them on the permanent vertical smile. That’s why Adobe basically said that there’s not going to be a 64-bit version of Photoshop et al for the Mac.

If I were hell bent on writing a commercial app and hell bent on making it work on the Mac I sure as hell would never write it in Cocoa. I’d use Qt. That would be my advice to Onyx.